­ I’ve taken thousands of telemarketing cold calls over the years.  Many are deceptive, most are awful.  And a few are good. Here is a common deception.  Many calls originate in call centers in India or the Philippines.  Callers use IP phones and connect via the Internet to a system in the US, which generates … Read more

­ I survived one of the worst customer service experiences ever this week.  We can all draw some lessons from this story. The end user customer operates branch sites across the Midwest USA and uses Infrasupport firewalls to connect to the Internet and main office in the St. Paul, MN. area.  This branch site is … Read more

­ Sometimes when high tech meets international politics, reality really is stranger than fiction. First, a few enlightened members of our US Congress accused Chinese telecom equipment giant, Hauwei, of spying for the Chinese government. Here is one of many press articles, this one from October, 2012.  Here is another article from 2011.  Apparently, much of … Read more

­ Many people will see the words, “Net neutrality” and groan about yet more tech gobbledygook and geeks who spend too much time pretending to be Mr. Spock and watching Star Trek re-runs.  Nobody on Main Street cares about net neutrality, right?  Isn’t this all just an arcane concept that never intersects with real people … Read more

With all the IT security issues in the news lately, suddenly IT security is everyone’s problem.  One natural question behind the headlines is, what is the right way to handle IT security vulnerabilities? Here are some thoughts. To keep things simple, let’s limit this discussion to three major players.  The real world is more complicated, but … Read more

­ Given the recent security breaches all over the news, what would a good Main Street business security solution look like and how much would it cost?  After all, if organizations such as the NSA and large retailers such as Target can’t keep their secrets safe, what chance does Main Street business have? A pretty … Read more

­ The sensational IT security stories just seem to keep coming.  Consider: Researchers at antivirus companies decoded a mysterious computer virus named Stuxnet, apparently authored by our own NSA and the Israelli government, designed to attack Iran’s nuclear equipment. Army Private Bradley Manning (now Chelsea Manning) stole hundreds of thousands of secret communications and videos and … Read more

­ If you shopped at Target between 11/27/2013 and 12/15/2013, congratulations.  Your credit or debit card info is one of around 40 million up for sale in a thriving underground marketplace complete with wholesalers, distributors, retailers, and easy to use websites.  Replace your card right now before bad things happen. Brian Krebs broke the story in … Read more

­ This story is one example of many for what the best IT professionals do to keep our skills current. The story started in April, 2013 when an opportunity to deliver a project based on a software product called RHN Satellite from a company named Red Hat came along. Large companies use RHN Satellite for activities such as automated builds, … Read more

My family is OK with health insurance coverage for now and I live in Minnesota, which has its own website for navigating the local healthcare marketplace, so I don’t need to deal with the US healthcare.gov website to find health insurance. But I was curious after looking at the news the past several days. I … Read more